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The 1995 Wilks published his second puzzle book, The Ultimate Noah’s Ark.

In 1988, after the contest was completed, Wilks published The Annotated Ultimate Alphabet, which included the key to the words: 4Īstute readers identified many new words that Wilks did not consciously paint and in 1992 new editions of The Ultimate Alphabet and The Annotated Ultimate Alphabet were published, The bookseller WHSmith even listed it as the “most shop-lifted title” of the year.

The book became a surprise bestseller in both the UK and America, eventually selling more than 750,000Ĭopies. The Ultimate Alphabet was published in 1986 and the contest was to correctly identify all 7777 words from a 12,000-word workbook. Research and paint the 26 acrylic canvases and included 7777 words in his abecderium.

Wilks approached his publisher with the idea of a puzzle book based around finding all of the words in a series of paintings for each letter of the alphabet – like a child’s ABC book "taken to ridiculous lengths." He spent four years consulting encyclopedias, specialist books and even an Australian dictionary to On the heels of Britain’s armchair treasure hunt craze, spurred by Kit Williams wildly successful 1979 book Masquerade, 2 The intricate detail and the almost Bosch or Dali sense of surrealism are what made the book something of a cult classicĪnd are characteristic of all of Wilks’ work: With a single exception, all of the 32 illustrations were done in pen and ink, which Wilks felt was his most accomplished medium. His first major commission was for Brian Aldiss’ epic poem Pile – Petals From Saint Klaed’s Computer, published in 1979. 1947) began art school on scholarship at age 13 and after studying for seven years he began a careerĪs a graphic designer, founding the London design agency TWD. To suggest that the picture repays careful study is someting of an understatement. Wilks included 1234 nouns, verbs and adjectives that began with S. This is the majority of the letter S – the most complicated image from Mike Wilks’ The Ultimate Alphabet.